Unraveling Copyright Rules for Cyberspace

By JOHN MARKOFF

Published: March 9, 1995

SAN FRANCISCO, March 8—
Government officials from 11 industrial nations have concluded their first official meeting on copyright issues in cyberspace, with plans to keep looking for agreements on protecting intellectual property in an electronic world that knows no physical borders.

The senior United States representative at the meeting, Bruce A. Lehman, Assistant Secretary of Commerce and the Commissioner of Patents and Trademarks, called the closed-door three-day meeting that ended here today an exploratory effort. He said the group would work toward a consensus that the United States hoped could be presented to a broader international copyright organization.

Big differences still remain between copyright laws in the United States and those in other countries, including France, Germany and Japan. Those differences could limit the ability to buy and sell electronic information and entertainment products.

"We've had fruitful discussions," Mr. Lehman said. "We've looked at how each of our countries would handle practical problems of electronically distributing products in a global context."

The growth of global electronic networks is presenting thorny problems for governments.

"We will quickly be at point where every village in China will have access to the Internet," said Paul Goldstein, an expert on intellectual property law at Stanford University.

He said that although American copyright law was well suited to new advances in technology, the international situation was more difficult because countries that were net copyright importers often had little incentive to meet American demands for expanded copyright protection.

"What happens when you put a digital encyclopedia on line in the United States, and it can be read by computer users anywhere in the world?" Mr. Lehman asked. "There are a lot of very serious political problems. The European copyright system is vastly different from our own, and there is a great reluctance on their part to adopt our system."

Technology experts predict that all commercial entertainment and information products will eventually be stored digitally, as strings of ones and zeroes, making it remarkably easy to produce one copy or a million copies of anything from a book to a song or a movie.

Mr. Lehman said the changes would require new technology tools, as well as international political agreements, to protect copyrights in cyberspace.

"You can't hope to protect intellectual property without a technology component," he said.

Many people in the computer, publishing and entertainment industries have been hoping that new data coding techniques would provide more control over the sale of electronic information. However, some critics say there may ultimately be no way to limit the flow of digital information.

Mr. Lehman said he was optimistic that a crisis could be avoided. "There are hand-wringers who think the world is falling apart whenever something new happens," he said. "It's not going to be that difficult."